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New Content

This update is intended to add some flavor to the world and make it feel a bit more lively. We’ve added several new creatures to the upper parts of the world, particularly on the surface of the far side of the planet as well as relatively shallow underground. We’ve also added some new areas to explore (and a new boss) that are related to the new creatures. You will need to generate a new world from the sandbox menu or create a new character to see much of the new content.

Here are a couple of the new creatures:

Story Content

In addition to the new creatures and related content, we added a bit of story content and changed some of the existing progression a bit. We added a new button on the Pioneer Station comm device (the device that requires the battery on the top floor) and there is a new satellite dish on top of the Pioneer station, but it seems to be missing a component…
We also changed the method of obtaining the Level 2 keycard upgrade – The upgrade device is now found in [spoiler]the captain’s room in the Pioneer Station barracks.[/spoiler] This update is fairly light on the direct story content, but the next update should expand on the story and the mysteries of the planet quite a bit.

Food/Cooking Changes

We re-worked the cooking/food system quite a bit. Prior to this update only a handful of food items had buffs associated with them, but in this update we’ve added buff effects to most of the foods. All fruits, mushrooms and meats now have buffs that you can get by eating them. In previous versions, you’ve been able to cook food by using the crafting menu, but now cooking is done similar to how ore is processed. We’ve added pop-up menu when you right click the campfire, and you can both cook food and process ores in the same devices.
The campfire has just one slot for ingredients, but the brick oven and advanced smelter both have 2 slots, which allows you to combine some food items to create new recipes. For example, a Juicy Fruit will give you a heal over time and a sporepod mushroom will temporarily increase your max health. Both items will fill 1/4th of your stomach, but if you cook them together you can make a food item that will give you both buffs and still just fill 1/4th of your stomach. You can also cook a fruit with a plant fiber to make Fruit Chews, which give you longer lasting buffs that fill less of your stomach.

Other Content

Some of the new creatures can inflict a bleed status effect on you, so we added Primitive Bandages (can be made with plant fiber) and Cloth Bandages that can stop the bleeding status. In addition, you can add some medicinal herbs to the cloth bandage in order to make a Poultice Bandage that heals you.

Bleeding – Slow damage over time, which can be cured by using a bandage. Inflicted by blow darts.

Spore Poison & Vulnerability – Increases damage from all sources

Misc Fixes

Fixed some issues where certain sounds would play at full volume regardless of distance. Let us know if you notice any other sound fx that seem too loud.

Changed the projectile attack of the golems. Instead of throwing rocks, they now use some kind of sufficiently advanced technology to levitate materials out of the ground and fling them at players

Fixed some issues that would cause certain tooltips to not appear when they should.

Known Issues:

The world generator may get stuck while generating worlds. We think we’ve fixed all the cases where this can happen, but we can’t be completely sure that there are no more lingering issues. If you run into this issue, definitely let us know.

This update adds quite a bit of new bits of content and changes, so let us know if you run into any issues and we’ll fix them ASAP. As always, we encourage any feedback you folks have about the new content (or any old content). We love hearing from you, so don’t be shy =)

Happy Halloween! Some kind of spooky comet has been seen in the sky, and it seems to have resulted in some kind of Halloween related weirdness! You should find a stack of seeds for the new pumpkin bush and a random mask in your inventory, and we’ve heard sightings of weird ghost-like energy beings that can be found on the surface of the planet.

We’re still hard at work on the next larger content update, but we decided to do a small Halloween update in the interim because Halloween is probably the best holiday. As usual, let us know if you run into any problems or if you have any suggestions.

New Content

Ghost creature

Ghost Hide armor set

Ghost Hide Helmet

Ghost Hide Torso

Ghost Hide Leggings

Ghost Hide Gloves

Ghost Hide Boots

Ghost Hide Arms

Ghost Blade

Soul Vessel

Another creature

Pumpkin Bushes and Pumpkins

Pumpkin Berry

Small Pumpkin

Medium Pumpkins

Large Pumpkin

Very Large Pumpkin

Pumpkin Seeds for growing Pumpkin Bushes

Edible Pumpkin Rind

Various Halloweeny masks

Pumpkin Mask

Jack O’ Lantern Mask

Halloween Hood

Hockey Mask

Plastic Pumpkin Bucket

New crafting materials

Ghost Hide

Ghost Claw

Item Changes

We changed the Flying Javelin to a Flying Harpoon, which fires darts with the alternate fire. This is unrelated to Halloween.

Update 0.7.5

The primary goal with this update was to change the combat balance and armor/weapon progression to be more satisfying across the length of the game. This update is light on the new content because we’re still working on the next major content update, but we figured we should go ahead and put out the balance changes in the meantime.

Previously, armor provided percentage damage reduction, which meant early armor sets protected very little, the high level armor sets ended up providing far too much protection, and going from one tier to the next didn’t feel very satisfying because gaining a few percentage points of defense at a time is really boring. The new system uses flat damage reduction, so if you pick up a helmet that has a defense of 3 it will just prevent 3 damage, which might not seem like a big change but it allows us to make the progression much more satisfying and each new tier of armor or weapons should feel like more of an upgrade. There is a cap on the defense though, and you will always take at least 25% of the damage that is dealt to you. These changes required tweaking the balance of pretty much everything in the game. Most creatures have more health, most weapons do more damage, and we’ve changed the way armor piercing works so that individual weapons can have specific armor piercing values.

We’ve done a significant amount of testing, but with all the combinations of creatures and weapons we have I’m sure there will still be some balance issues, so let us know what you think. We’re definitely not done tweaking the combat balance, but we decided now was a good time to start making some big steps towards a better system.

We decided to celebrate Independence Day in the best way possible, by adding more things to Signs of Life that explode in a brilliant and dangerous fashion. For this special holiday update, we added several fireworks and stuffed a Fireworks Party Pack into everyone’s inventory, filled to the brim with instruments of pyromaniacal delight.

Added ability to change materials in crafting, for example you can now choose between using a normal or rubber stick in many recipes. Some recipes also let you change the primary (first) material, which can change the crafted result, for example now there is just a “torch” recipe, and you can change the result from a normal sap torch to a biofuel torch by changing the primary material from sap to biofuel. We only adjusted a few recipes, so let us know if you have more ideas for places we could use this feature.

Removed Projects menu since its functionality was included in the Crafting menu

Added mineable Biofuel to world generator

Added optional settings for the Dodge mechanic as well as a bindable dodge action – Can be found in the settings menu

Double Tap – How it worked previously, double tap forward to dodge roll forward, double tap back to backjump.

Shift + Double Tap – Double tap only works when holding shift

Binds Only – Only activates when you press the key bound to dodge, dodge rolls forward if you’re moving forward, backjump if you’re moving backwards or standing still. Bound to Z by default… but honestly that is a terrible bind and we’re trying to find a better one, but its tricky to find something that we’re not already using that can be easily pressed while doing other actions. Still working on this.

Increased friction on the player when stopping to be less slippy

Balance Changes

Tweaked combat balance a bit – We only made some small changes for now, but we’re planning on doing a bit of an overhaul soon

Melee weapons do a bit more damage, and have a wider spread between tiers

Enemies have a bit more health

Added additional health set bonuses to Bronze and Tin armor sets

Miscellaneous

Added ability to tweak various balance settings for creatures and melee weapons through a text file located in your game install directory (The directory should be something like Steam/SteamApps/Common/Signs Of Life/Content/CSV) Note: I don’t think the projectiles file works yet, so don’t be surprised if tweaking that doesn’t do anything.